Have fewer bad days
I woke up to a couple emails. One was an unexpected medical bill. The other was from a marketing client who was upset at the recent performance report. My neighbor was getting ready to catch a flight at 4:30am (and I could tell). It was raining and the dog still needed to go out. It was a bad fucking day.
We sorted the client out, and the medical bill was within my means, but by then it was all too late. I was having a bad day, and nothing was gonna change my mind about it.
Can you relate? Those days when everything seems to go wrong, and at some point a switch flips and you’re almost determined to fit every event into your ‘bad day’ box? Negative bias colors my perspective of subsequent events, a shitty thought I won’t release compounds throughout the day and grows insurmountable. Sometimes circumstances really do stack up like that, but many times everything only seems to go wrong – they don’t actually go wrong.
On these days I have to consciously – and gently – remind myself of one thing: I can start my day over at any time. That goes for weeks, months, and years, too. “Consciously” because my negative attention bias will automatically filter everything good out of my view; “gently” because if I try to force a happy face, my instincts are to revolt and get even angrier. In my head it sounds a lot more like alright, let’s just start this shit over instead of a robotic OK, now I am starting my day over. Speak how you speak, like a good friend would speak truthfully and bluntly to you.
The effects of compounded negativity can ruin your day (and someone else’s), can make us less confident and more distrustful, skeptical, & cynical. James Clear has a great take: “The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere.”
On wrong-side-of-the-bed mornings, everything is hell. And even on neutral days, it’s a real struggle not to default to the doom and gloom the day probably holds for me. That’s why I have to start my day out with something positive – a “thank you” to the universe, a quick glance at a daily reader, a hot cup of coffee. I’ll get outta bed for that. Start your day off with something positive and train your day’s focus through that lens. Start your day with the negative and you’ll find plenty of evidence of why things suck.
What will you tell yourself to start your day over? How can you begin your day more positively this week?
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Go get ‘em this week.